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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23974063">Service &amp; Aid</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/noun/pseuds/noun'>noun</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A/B/O - Alpha turned into an omega with large quantities of alpha semen, A/B/O - Mated in Unexpected First Heat, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, F/M, Fealty, Knotting, Loyalty, Swordplay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 18:14:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,606</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23974063</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/noun/pseuds/noun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>King Emil was clear-sighted and cunning unless an attractive omega got him hard and all sense left him until he found something to fuck and spill his seed into. They were one poorly-timed knot away from an ambush that left all of them dead, and Johanna refused to allow it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>King/Lady Knight, Original Female Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>73</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Id Pro Quo 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Service &amp; Aid</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiffElderberry/gifts">BiffElderberry</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to rosefox for the beta!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Almost—” Johanna hissed, and behind her, Emil gasped and pressed his forehead against her shoulder, his fingers tangled in the slack of her shirt. He thrust once, twice, her cunt burning, and finally he summoned up a reserve of strength from somewhere within him, and slammed his hips hard enough to pop his knot inside her, his hips pressed right against her ass. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She whimpered, despite herself. His knot wasn’t meant to fit inside her—female alphas weren’t built for it the way omegas were, all soft and yielding and squealing when they got fucked. It wasn’t meant to fit, and yet it did, and even now it was growing, her insides cramping. He couldn’t pull out now—he physically </span>
  <em>
    <span>couldn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>—and even if he had been able, they would still have the problem they suffered from before. King Emil was clear-sighted and cunning unless an attractive omega got him hard. Then all sense left him until he found something to fuck and spill his seed into. They were one poorly-timed knot away from an ambush that left all of them dead, and Johanna refused to allow it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Frankly, Johanna considered her solution brilliant—they didn’t even need to leave his command tent when the problem arose, just send out the rest of his generals and his guard, and then she could bend over and drop her trousers, brace on the map table, and he’d handle his problem. Then they could all get back to work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What he </span>
  <em>
    <span>needed</span>
  </em>
  <span> was an omega all his own. Preferably one with enough sense to not needlessly demand his attention all the time, whelp a litter of heirs every three years or so, and resist the urge to meddle in politics. A good, sensible omega, of which there were many at court, all of them ready and willing to do their duty. What he had was Lady Johanna Weiss of Helder, bent over his map of the latest advance, doing her best not to jostle the troop markers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Johanna,” he moaned, and she was startled at that more than at the first spurt of come, hot and soothing at least some of the ache inside her. She was not in a position to see his face, but she felt the way he rubbed his cheek against the jut of her shoulder. He was neither a weak man nor an unworthy king. If he was to have only one weakness, let it be this and this alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He kept coming, kept jerking against her back, as he spent himself, the full measure of an alpha’s copious production hot and thick inside her. But he did not say her name again, and Johanna was left to consider the troop markers as they rattled with each shake of the table. Wryly, she supposed that if this were a song, this would be the time she would come upon a winning strategy for routing the enemy and winning the day—but nothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally, he seemed to finish, sighing, though his knot didn’t shrink and wouldn’t for perhaps a quarter of an hour. The edge of the table had made an enemy of her hips, but that was secondary to the ache in her cunt. There was the knot, but there was also the come. It had nowhere to go—he had sealed her like a finger in a dyke—and she felt oddly tight, a queer sort of pressure that had to abate once he withdrew. It would make a mess, and the tent would stink of Emil, but if it cowed some of the other generals, well, that could be called an unexpected bonus.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lady Johanna?” Emil said, and she was gratified by his hesitance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, your majesty?” she replied, though mostly to the county of Pickford. An errant speck of ink had landed in the center of the ‘o’. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you uncomfortable?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, your majesty.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Emil sighed, and wisely did not pull away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I may have been—ignoble. In my romantic pursuits.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Since they were alone, she said, “If I catch you at it again, Emil, I will start a civil war, I swear it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Emil only sighed again, and dropped his forehead back against her shoulder.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>They survived the campaign without further incident. She had caught him glancing one or twice at the omegas in the villages they passed through, but his eyes always went from the omegas to her—and Johanna did not simper, only glare, and Emil’s crowned head would snap forward again, and he would not dismount. Johanna called her method effective.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two weeks out from the capital, they passed through the lands of Baron Farlowe. The baron was the king’s cousin, somehow, and a beta. Johanna found him a perfectly acceptable host, and chiefest of his virtues was that he did not appear to employ any omegas. This meant the evening feast went very smoothly, and Johanna even caught the eye of one of the serving women. After the meal and during the toasts, Johanna made a polite exit, and was pleased but not surprised to find both a warm bath and a nude woman in her rooms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her name was Rose, and she was a beta, and she was very, very sweet, both in taste and in temperament, which Johanna found very enjoyable. Better still, she was content to sit in the bath by the fire in the afterglow, while Johanna petted her hair and took the occasional kiss while she scrubbed herself raw and pink. She deserved something of her own, some small reprieve from the field.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She left Rose asleep in her room and went for a walk sometime after the midnight call.  Her hair was still damp, but she braided it and draped herself in a fur mantle. The castle was unfamiliar to her, but Johanna reasoned that one found the ramparts by going up. It would be hours until the servants went to light the fires for the morning. Depending on the enthusiasm of the cook, she might not have woken yet to start the morning baking. All was still and quiet, and the hallways were even absent of guards, but as she turned down one well-appointed hallway hung with tapestries depicting the Farlowe family’s history, she paused. Even through thick walls and closed doors, she could hear the shrill cries of an omega in the throes of passion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Despite witnessing his failures firsthand, despite wrenching a promise from him, she wanted to believe in Emil. She believed in him wholeheartedly when she followed him into battle. It was one of the only things that she approached with that much full-throated zeal. That he was capable of disappointing her elsewhere was rationally possible; everyone had their vices.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She did not need to go look. Anyone else could have taken an omega to bed. All of his close circle were alphas. She could choose to believe that he had behaved in an honorable way, that he had learned the virtue of self control.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or she could check. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She turned down the hallway, one hand on the wall as she approached the door. If it was Emil in that room, bedding some omega, he had broken his promise. If it was not, she would look the fool for being so paranoid. His other generals and staff had accepted their unusual arrangement because it kept Emil on course, kept him clear-headed, and could be twisted into what was due to a liege. It was not attachment, it was duty. But barging into a room on a half-assed suspicion?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna gritted her teeth before the door and then pressed her ear to the wood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had spent enough time under Emil to recognize the pitch and timbre of his grunts and groans, and threw open the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the scene she should have expected, Emil hunched over some spread little thing in the great bed, too wound in the rut to notice the intrusion. The omega noticed immediately, to his credit, and his wide-eyed surprise turned to narrowed determination. Her first thought when he reached for the pillow was that he intended to use it to hide his face. But then he pulled out the knife.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was slow, too slow, and Emil still rutting away. Her braid, heavy and wet, slapped against her back as she dove, shouldering Emil aside as she pinned the omega’s wrist to the bed. No one ever wasted martial education on their omega children, and he was weak enough that it was no trouble to keep him down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But with the shove, Emil was jolted into awareness. Not of the fact that someone was trying to kill him, but that someone was trying to take his omega away. She heard him snarl, saw the corresponding grin on the omega’s face, and then gasped as Emil’s forehead slammed into the back of her head, hard enough that sparks danced in her sight. She lost her hold on the omega’s wrists, and he wasted no time in squirming away, falling to the floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Emil did not let up. As Johanna struggled to roll onto her front, he went for her throat, thumbs pressing into her windpipe. The bed stank of sex, Emil’s alpha blending with the omega, thick enough to make Johanna gag. The challenge brought her instincts to the forefront, even if they were false, giving her the extra strength she needed to get off her belly, twisting in his grip. Emil stared down at her, frozen in the act of baring his teeth, and then all that dropped away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Johanna?” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She threw him off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The omega was on the floor, knife still in hand. Maybe he’d wanted to see if Emil would manage to kill her. Johanna didn’t bother to consider motives. Seeing she was on her feet, he dashed for the door, but Johanna was faster, grabbing him by the hair and slamming him against the wall. The knife fell to the floor, and she kicked it away. Emil was still heavy-limbed and caught in stupor, but he was struggling to his feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Johanna,” he said again, but she didn’t bother answering, using her free hand to close the door. There had been no guards in the hall, and no omegas in the serving room. She had questions for this one, of course, and then the baron.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I told you,” she said, and for lack of anything better, she said it again. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I told you.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>There had been no sport in rooting out the conspiracy that had plotted the assassination attempt. She was left to stew in her thoughts for the entirety of the trip, and kept silent the entire ride back to the capital. She could not avoid direct questions, of course, but she could answer them with a curt, ‘yes, your majesty,’ or ‘no, your majesty,’ and Emil had the good sense not to push the issue. He didn’t get himself into trouble, either, though several of the manors they made use of had available omegas. He would look at them, and then look at her like a puppy she had kicked, all sad eyes and wobbly lip, and she hated it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She resolved her annoyance and anger the usual way once they were back in the capital: hacking at a training dummy with a dull sword in a forgotten back room of the palace. Her form was awful, and it was doing less for her mood than it usually did. She still felt tense and tight, sweating like a fish and damnably thirsty, but she didn’t feel numb, and the dummy wasn’t straw and kindling yet, so she kept hacking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone tried the door, and she swung around, sword up. The baron’s conspiracy hadn’t run deep, but the paranoia infested her mind. It was not her duty or her strength to go digging for that sort of threat, and Emil had others who were handling the matter. Conflict in the field was open and understandable, and honorable. For all that conspiracy was another form of strategy, it was one she had no grasp on, and thus loathed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was Emil who entered, and closed the door behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He came forward anyway, his hands up. She did not give ground, and he did not stop. He had dressed himself plainly, with no armor. He looked smaller for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I owe you an apology,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She would not fall prey to this. She exhaled hard, nostrils flaring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smiled lopsidedly, and tried another tactic. He had stopped close enough that she could swing and hit him, for all that the sword was tourney-dull. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Johanna,” he tried, cajoling, and when her expression did not falter, he looked away. “I heard you were going to resign.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she said nothing, what little remained of the facade fell away; he paled. He stepped forward, and he was at the point of her blade, and froze.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pushed the point under his chin, forcing him to raise it, leaving the long line of his throat exposed, his Adam’s apple in stark relief.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please don’t go back to Helder,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I don’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You threaten everything you’ve built with this foolishness,” she hissed. “You could have </span>
  <em>
    <span>died</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and then what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t mean to,” he began. “I hadn’t— there’s not been anyone else in my bed, since you offered. But when you went off with the woman, I thought…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Were you trying to make </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span> jealous?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was drunk!” he protested. “I was drunk, and foolish, and guilty of every sin you’ve laid at my feet, and it will not happen again, I swear it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stopped, and sighed, then drew breath to start on whatever he intended to try and use next.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You smell sweet,” he said, but his expression was pinched.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna was thrown by the sudden change in topic. She dropped the point of the sword. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What the blazes do you mean?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You smell,” he started, and at her tight expression, he redirected rather than repeat himself. “You smell different. Less like burnt toast, more like… regular toast.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Emil,” she said, very evenly. “You are my king. I have fought and bled for you, and listened to your half-assed apology, but if you do not leave this room, I will say things I will doubtless regret.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He held up placating hands, and she scoffed, and then bent double as a cramp seized her middle. Emil did not run to her, grab her and haul her to the physician, as he would at the sign of her in pain. He just stood there, his hands crunched in fists.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna inhaled, and drew herself up to her full height.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You smell like an omega,” he said, very slowly. “I think you’re in heat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stared at him, pushing back bubbling hysteria, a laugh, the urge to throw something at him. Instead, she scoffed, and moved as though she meant to go back to swinging at the dummy. She was familiar with turning pain into strength and action, but this was neither. This was unease, marrow-deep, some warning from her own body in a language she didn’t speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna knew the feeling was a warning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had not completely turned her back on him. The sudden movement in her peripheral vision as he surged forward gave him away, but she brought the blade up too slowly; he knocked it aside with his arm, and caught hold of her wrist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He went to grapple for the sword, and she kicked out, nothing but satisfaction in how the toe of her riding boot met his shin, nice and solid. He dropped, but with an arm around her shoulder and neck that dragged her down onto the floor, where he tried to straddle her and pin her arms. But Johanna knew all his tricks, and had been in the filth and mud of a field in full armor far more often. She ended half on top of him, pinning him on his belly, though his arms remained free. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me,” he pleaded, and Johanna barked out a laugh that was cut midway into a gasp of pain, her body twisted into a tight curl of agony as she fell to the side, hilt still clutched in her hand, the metal dragging across the stone floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she said, “absolutely not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve done it before,” he said, and he tried to pry her fingers clear of the hilt. She dug her elbow into the soft target under his ribs and scrambled back on her knees to clear some distance. He held a hand to the tender spot, bent on all fours, but stubbornly swung his head up to look at her.  “It won’t be any different, I promise. You’ll die if we don’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was glad for every drill that had taught her to never drop her sword, for she clung to it now with twice the conviction she had ever had on the battlefield.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am not some tavern omega, to be bent over at your leisure,” she snarled. He made his way to his feet, rubbing the spot under his ribs, favoring his left leg which she had not kicked. He was, naturally, sporting an erection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck what you want,” she said, and got both hands around the sword hilt. She could club him about the head with it a few times to knock him out without killing him, and then curl up in the corner and die. It would be a noble death, very poetic, which suited his claim that she was anything but the alpha she’d been her entire life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing would change,” he pleaded, and she stared at him. He could not truly be that stupid. She was going to lose her command, her reputation, her land. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Everything</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Omegas did not hold the position she had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sensing weakness or at least a chance to speak before she followed through, he continued, if in a rather rushed fashion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know what happens when heats go untended. If that happened to you, what would I do? You’re half the reason I’ve been able to keep the nobility united. I’d be dead a hundred times without you. It’ll collapse in—in a month if you aren’t there. I can’t talk to the lords and ladies,” he said, and she tightened her hold on the hilt, bracing for the next hit of pain like she would a blow. It was worse than the others; they rolled in like waves, building on the previous. It was too much. She had been stabbed, had her shoulder dislocated in a joust, broken her leg in a tumble off her horse in a pouring rain, and this exceeded and combined them all. She tasted blood, and as the sword clattered to the floor, she realized she had bitten into the soft tissue of her tongue like she was suffering a fit. She spat a mouthful of blood at Emil when he knelt beside her, pressing her wrists to the floor, but he only wiped it off with the back of his hand. His expression was grim and set like a stone wall, and he reached for the front of her trousers even as she kicked at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ll </span>
  <em>
    <span>die</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Good</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Johanna said. “I would rather.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, you wouldn’t,” he said, even as she gave up on getting the sword back and decided to go for his eyes instead. She agreed with him, in the part of her that wasn’t being petulant. He slapped her hands away, and on the next wave, he yanked the front of her trousers open, pushing her shirt out of the way. She was so wet as for it to be embarrassing, sticky thighs and slick dripping between her cheeks. It felt slippery and absurd and disgusting, and now Emil had a glassy-eyed look she was very familiar with, though never this intimately.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can,” he said, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed, his mouth as wet as her cunt, “I can make it easier for you, I know what you like.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That, at least, gave her an idea that wasn’t simply killing or incapacitating him or killing herself. She seized it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let go of me,” she said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had no self-control. He wouldn’t be able to override instinct and manage it. And then she would be justified in whatever course of action she decided to take.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Emil seemed briefly conflicted, looking from her to the hold he had on her wrists to her face and back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she couldn’t resist saying. “You never could resist.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some of the mania faded from his eyes, and he sat up, and more importantly, let go. His expression was very briefly self-satisfied before Johanna shoved his leg aside and rolled out from under him, drawing her legs up to her chest, all thoughts of running away lost in the pain. Emil slid over to her, and reached for her, but jerked his hand away at the last moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was right. She didn’t want to die.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do it,” she said. Her mouth was still more blood than spit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nodded once, then pushed her down. The stone floor was cold against her bare backside, and Emil was sloppy, shoving down his trousers and rutting first against her thigh before managing to push inside. The relief was not immediate. He fucked her in small, shallow strokes that did not seem to focus on her pleasure at all. When the knot began to form, she anticipated the usual struggle, the pain, but one solid thrust was all it took to seat it inside her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her head tucked into the curve of his neck, the shock of being knotted without pain was sudden and unexpected; she bit hard, and he yelped at the pain but did not pull away. He came, panting, and this was still the same, for all it now felt all the more intense, each jerk of his hips driving the knot further inside. This she knew the rhythm of, and when he stopped moving and breathed a little more easily, she knew that he was finished for now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Better?” Emil asked quietly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna tensed, anticipating another round of the pain. She knew how heats worked, even if she’d never had an omega during one. In this, at least, there were no abnormalities. But she was not wholly resolved. He had still behaved abominably. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t finish,” she pointed out. He smiled, and in that moment, he looked so much everything she knew he could be, at his best, that she considered forgiving him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The impulse was brief and easily squashed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to be on top,” she said, suddenly, and Emil looked briefly puzzled before nodding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pulled away slowly, and she released him from her embrace with equal reluctance. This was accompanied, of course, by a wet flow of seed gushing from her, and more when she  stood, kicking off her boots so she could remove her trousers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Emil winced as he lay down on the cold floor, and if she took some quiet delight in it, well. She could not embody virtue at all times. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She settled over him, knees on the stone, and found his cock soft, the knot deflated. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At her look, he shrugged. When she did not glance away, he colored.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I need—a moment.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Useless,” she said, but it was too fond to really bite. “Tell me more about how the kingdom would collapse without me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It would!” he said, earnestly. “You’re the practical one. Remember the problems with the supply line, last fall? You were the one who terrorized the supply officers into behaving, and straightened out the rations.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She took his hand, and yanked off the glove, moving his fingers to her cunt. He caught on quickly, and worked two inside her, his thumb dragging over her clit. She would have prefered his mouth, but he was using it to say nice things about her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Remember the rout, three years ago? You told me the ground was too wet for the calvary, and I didn’t listen, and my horse threw me, but you were there, and you killed the knight who wanted me dead—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A great number of people want you dead,” she pointed out, and rolled her hips forward as he curled his fingers, which dripped with his own spend.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, but, he wanted me dead </span>
  <em>
    <span>in that moment</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and you were there…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Emil’s voice was husky, his words feverish and somewhat unconnected. The manic glee with which he applied himself to the task of fingering her was unusual, as was the slack-jawed and glassy-eyed expression on his face, the expression unfamiliar to her but welcome nonetheless. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had certainly never seen it when she caught him with any of his ill-advised conquests.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was thickening again, dripping, the knot at his base swelling, and looking at her like she was victory come down to earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She could work with this. It was not ideal, but she had faced worse odds, and won.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The last few stragglers made their way into the tent. Johanna didn’t bother acknowledging them; the stares of the other, older men and women had enough weight. Nearly all of them had the exhausted and rumpled look she assigned to new commanders advanced to their positions by bloodline alone, unable to juggle the benefits of their position and the duties. They had overindulged the night before and forgotten how early they’d need to wake the next morning. They would learn.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now that we are all </span>
  <em>
    <span>here</span>
  </em>
  <span>—” One single pointed barb could not hurt. “—we may begin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On her left, Emil sat, looking moodily over the map, seeing whatever he saw that made him what he was. He always was especially attentive after a thorough fuck and did not mind being woken up early for it. He had, perhaps, been overly optimistic in his assertion that nothing would change. She had begun to stink of him when she had started their arrangement months ago, and his other advisors and commanders had accepted it as a difficult but important indignity to be borne for the glory of the kingdom. Nothing </span>
  <em>
    <span>seemed</span>
  </em>
  <span> to have changed, and there were no whispers that she was anything but an alpha. The only talk was how Lady Johanna had cut out some of the pretenses and now slept in the same tent and kept the same hours as the king. This was seen as evidence of her solid practicality and a good thing, for it meant the king was subject to fewer distractions (and the potential political downfalls of a conniving omega) and they were all happier for him being firmly kept in hand.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, there would be muttering about an heir, but she had thoughts on how that might be handled. It was, after all, another facet of </span>
  <em>
    <span>duty</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and while she had so far never trafficked in rumor and machinations, she wondered if some evidence of two alphas producing children could not be turned up in some molding tome. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that was far beyond this morning and this battlefield, and Emil had stood, reaching for one of the markers that signified part of their calvary, had called out a question to the man who knew them best, and all the eyes in the tent were upon him, even those half-crusted still from sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was what he could be, absent his vices. And indulging those, she had finally decided, was no great sacrifice.</span>
</p>
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